How this effect is made?

[Paul Bertham]

Hi,

his is no “effect” in particular way.
the kite surfer has been rotoscoped (masking) and composited together into the final image.
fantastic work.

[Tielman Dewaele]

Very interesting piece indeed.
I like to hear more of people who has ideas about this one.
There is indeed a lot of rotoscoping involved but theres a lot off(AE)camera moves in it aswell.
How did they do that. For example: it gets slowmo(probably shot 50 or 100 fps). Then the kiter gets rotoscoped, but then suddenly the camera rotates around the kiter and it fits in the end when it gets back in normal speed.
This kitesurfing so i dont think there wasnt many planned before they shot it.

How did they achieve that?

T.

T.

Quad Core Intel Mac Pro
Duo Core Intel MacBook Pro

Final Cut Pro 6, After Effects CS3, Cinema4D V10
Illustrator & Photoshop CS3

https://www.t-bloggy.blogspot.com/

[Jeremy Fabiano]

what im seeing is this (bare in mind im not too terribly experienced) but if i was gonna make the shot this is how i would do it…

first off you got the kiter doing HIS thing (its only one of him)

you get that camera move where it spins to the side

you greenscreen the photographer with a similar camera move and composite him into the shot, rotoscoping the parts where the kiter(s) cross over him…

the multiple kiters is done with echo..

bunch of 3d camera moves and some flash effects etc and its done…

This is an EXTREMELY complicated, and visually gratifying shot.

I believe this is how it’s made, hope it helps.

-Jeremy

[Dotan Stern]

Hi guys
yes i tought that this is rotoskoping of the guy and compose him over the background but they had to have a clean background so my question is how did they match that camera movement?
are they any tutorials or info about this thing?
it looks great i wonder how they combine it togeter
they mask him out and composite him on a clean background and move the camera in AE?

[Corbin Gross]

HolyFreakin’Crap!

So I’m thinking echo but probably not the one that comes in the box, right? On some of the really long, swirly tricks toward the end you can see apparent masking on the water under his shadow but choppy water is very forgiving. There is mostly clever camera work to make these shots possible.

On the rotation ones it seems to be two shots warped together. Remember when they were turning cars into tigers and whatnot all the time? I think it’s the same thing. I think the effects guys find to shots they can blend together with a similar trick in them then they take the first half of the trick and warp it into the second half. With a bunch of blurry water and a little motion blur on the back ground your gold.

That slow motion thing is scaring the crap out of me though.

[Bart Straman]

interesting, for the “many guys on the water” i think in first they used just simple “live painting”(search for painting in AE help) inside AE, because al the motion stays the same then, and yeah, rotoscope alot, use the echo effect for the guys to go together.
make some shots from another angle and make a very nice transition between the two(the camera switch u see)

Bart

[Derrick]

Not sure how it was done, but, AWESOME work.

That is the current (and many times over) World champion kite surfer, I saw him in Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa in February.

He travels all over the world surfing, everyone wants to sponsor him, film him, publish him, yet, he stays a very humble and cool guy to be around.

– Derrick

[Mike Park]

I took a minute to look at the shot in question and think that this is close to how it was pulled off. You need two video cameras. One at the start of where you want your animation and one at where the matrix/bullet time effect ends. You then rotoscope the segment of time you want for both cameras. you piece together a panaroma picture for a background and use a afx camera for the move. Then you position the start of the camera move at the first camera, and the end of the move from the second camera. Next turn your rotoscoped layers into 3d and crossfade/morph them over time from the images from the first camera to the images from the second camera. If you look close, the footage shows a 3d move, but the layers look flat. The effect is pulled off because the layers are in 3d with respect to each other and they added a bunch of blur. Great effect and time consuming with all the roto work. That is my best guess, or at least, how I would have done it without any expensive waterproof equipment. For another example of this, perhaps a little better to see, check the scene from about the 6 min mark frame by frame. You can see the cross fade between the two shots composited together – check the shadow on the thigh as you scrub. You can also see some slight color variation in the background where the shot and background footage/plate were blended together.

[Jon Agnew]

I think this is the fifth time in two months that someone has asked how to replicate this effect. Hadley must be getting more hits from AE users than kite surfers. lol.

[Anthony Spencer]

I emailed Andy Gordon (the guy who made this movie) about the first one he made before RE-VOLVE called “IN-VENT” (see it here).

It was 8 minutes long and everyone thought it was a trailer for something else.

Here was his email he sent back:

“Hi Anthony

I don’t know why people think the video is a trailer
for a full length version. That’s it. If it was a
trailer it would be a lot shorter than 8 minutes. It’s
just a stand alone web only video.

I edit on vegas, used AE for most of the effects. The
bullet time effect is a method I came up with, don’t
want to go into detail cos I don’t want everyone doing
it. The work that goes into making those shots is a
real pain, very labour intensive like 3 days for 1
second. but I think it was worth it.

Cheers
Andy”

Come on Andrew Kramer – I want the tutorial!!!!!
If anyone can come up with some good solutions for this I’d really appreciate it as I kitesurf and shoot kitesurf videos myself. Thanks.